COVID-19 doubling rate dips during lockdown in India

The number of COVID-19 cases in the country is doubling at a slower rate during the lockdown period, the Centre said on Friday as the confirmed cases of respiratory disease touched 13,835.

Before the lockdown was announced, COVID-19 cases were doubling every three days, but analysis of the data for the past seven days showed that the rate of growth of doubling has decreased to 6.2 days.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 Response, chaired by Health Minister Harshvardhan, reviewed the current situation and issued directions to deliver immediate solutions for meeting the healthcare challenges.

“Doubling rate in 19 states and union territories are even lower than average doubling rate,” Lav Aggarwal, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Health told reporters at the daily briefing on the COVID-19 situation.

He said the doubling rate was lower than the national level (6.2) in Kerala, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Ladakh, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Puducherry, Bihar, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, Assam, Tripura, Jammu and Kashmir.

“The ratio between COVID-19 patients who have recovered and deaths stands at 80:20 in the country, which is higher than that of several other countries,” Aggarwal said.

He said of the 13,835 persons infected with the disease, 1,749 have recovered and discharged from hospitals – which accounts for 13.6% of the total cases.

On the health infrastructure, he said 1,919 dedicated COVID hospitals have been set up across the country with a total number of 1.73 lakh beds, including 21,800 ICU beds.

GoM, that has External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Shipping Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Minister of State for Home Nityananda Rai and junior health minister Ashwani Choubey as members, also reviewed the testing strategy and availability of testing kits across the country along with the strategy for hotspots and cluster management.

The five lakh rapid antibody test kits that were received from China on Thursday have been distributed to states and districts on the basis of a high case burden. Besides, indigenous manufacturing of RT-PCR kits has started and 10 lakh kits per month could be produced from May.

Similarly, rapid antibody test kits will also be produced locally with a manufacturing capacity of 10 lakh kits per month from May.